Having started late, Cigna was under considerable pressure to get the new systems in place as quickly as possible. There were a number of reasons for the urgency.

First off, Cigna, along with other national insurers such as Aetna and Humana, was being sued by thousands of doctors nationwide who were furious about delays in payment for patient care. The doctors accused the insurers of deliberately delaying payment and improperly rejecting claims in order to save money. In January 2001, Cigna paid a $300,000 fine to the state of Georgia and signed a consent order promising to reform its claims processing system after Georgia’s insurance commissioner found its claims payment process to be "the worst I’ve ever seen." (Cigna recently settled most of the doctor lawsuits by pledging faster and more accurate claims processing with the new integrated platforms and promising to pay millions to physicians in compensation.)

Second, Cigna’s sales team, in order to win large employer accounts in an increasingly competitive environment, had promised that the new systems would provide improved customer service and would be up and running in early 2002.

Third, Cigna’s management was under pressure to cut costs after posting disappointing second quarter results in 2001, and they were anxious for the new systems’ promised cost reductions and productivity gains. Management’s stated goal was to lay off 3,100 people and hire another 1,100, for a total reduction of 2,000 positions.

Cigna began moving its members to the new platforms in 2001, but in relatively small numbers?10,000 to 15,000 people at a time. "There were minor things that were dealt with, but nothing major," Anania recalls. At the same time, the company began laying off customer service reps as part of a planned consolidation of 20 primary and specialty service centers into nine regional centers. Since Cigna expected huge gains in productivity from automated claims processing and customer service once the new systems were up and running, the reduction in headcount made perfect sense to management. In 2002, the company paid $33 million in severance for the 3,100 laid-off employees and spent $32 million to build the new regional centers.

A Migration to Nowhere

In January 2002, with new members coming on board and existing ones renewing, Cigna moved 3.5 million customers to the new platforms in one fell swoop. Problems erupted immediately.

Members suddenly had trouble obtaining health coverage. In one case, Cigna’s systems could not confirm health coverage for some new members for several weeks. Workers at another company effectively lost coverage when their membership information would not load properly into the new systems. Cigna issued member ID cards with incorrect identifiers. It issued cards missing prescription icons. People couldn’t get their prescriptions filled at their local drugstores.